Firework Crafts for Bonfire Night!

This week has been a lovely half term, a week of swirling leaves and with the sky the brightest blue. The sun low and the air cool and crisp and it all at once it began to feel like Bonfire Night was just around the corner. The past few years we have created a firework craft for kids to celebrate Bonfire Night and made something sweet to enjoy the day and to eat before we wrap up warm and head out to see our fireworks. Bonfire Night simply punctuates Autumn for me – it’s totally one of my favourite nights of the year. Our plan is usually to have hot dogs, play a few family games (Finlay is wanting to do Apple Bobbing this year!) have some Sparklers in the Garden before heading out to our local firework display which is set to music and always entertaining. This weekend we began to get in the Firework Mood and made Puffy Paint Salt Firework Pictures to celebrate.

We’ve wanted to try Salt Paint for a while but we added flour to the mixture too to make the paint thicker. But I’ve decided salt paint is the coolest thing! We all had a lot of fun with this. It’s brilliant for Firework painting because you can blob one colour right on top of each other and they don’t run together – genuis!

Firework Salt Painting

The great thing about this craft is that you have to make the paint in the first place – this was almost as fun than the actual craft (and I think Finlay in particular, preferred this to actually painting fireworks!)

What you will need……..

• Flour
• Liquid Watercolours or Soap Colourant  – which is cheaper (both of these will not stain as much as food colouring but food colouring can be used.)
• Salt
• Funnel
• Card (the paint can be heavy so card is better to use than paper) Dark colours like Black and Navy Blue work best to showcase the bright fireworks!
• Glitter (optional)
• Squeezy Bottles (these are not necessary, but do make it easier to make firework shapes!) You can buy them fairly cheaply here.

How to Make Salt Paint

1. Mix equal parts of flour, salt and water. Make sure all the lumps of flour are mixed in well or they will stick in the bottle’s neck.
2. Add Liquid watercolours and mix to make your desired colour. Bright colours work best for fireworks!
3. Fill your squeezy bottle (using a funnel is easier) with the paint and squeeze onto the card to make Firework Explosions!
4. Try adding a second colour on top of the first. The colours remain separate and don’t mix, which is an interesting aspect of this kind of paint.
5. You can add glitter (optional) to make the fireworks have a little more sparkle!
6. Hang up to dry – this may take 24-72 hours depending on how thick your paint has been spread.
7. Once the artworks dry, the salt puffy paint is hard and crystalline from all the salt and flour and is slightly raised. My kids found it really interesting, they traced their dried artwork with their fingers for hours!

Happy Bonfire Night everyone – hope you can enjoy some firework crafts for Bonfire Night and enjoy some fireworks too wherever you are!